Chester Spatt has served as the Kalorama Firm’s Senior Economic Advisor since 2008. He is the Pamela R. and Kenneth B. Dunn Professor of Finance at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, where he has taught since 1979. He served as Chief Economist of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Director of its Office of Economic Analysis (2004-07). He earned his Ph.D. degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania (1979), and received his B.A. degree from Princeton University (1975).

Professor Spatt is a well-known scholar of financial economics, with broad expertise in financial markets. He has extensively analyzed market structure, pricing and valuation, and the impact of information in the marketplace. He has been a leading expert on the design of securities markets, mortgage valuation, taxation and investment strategy. His recent research has included studies of credit rating agencies, securitization and equity trading, proxy voting advisors and securities lending. Professor Spatt was awarded TIAA-CREF’s Paul Samuelson Award for the Best Publication on Lifelong Financial Security, for his co-authored paper on asset location (Jl. of Finance, 2004). He has served as Executive Editor and a Founding Editor of the Review of Financial Studies (1990-93), President and a member of the Founding Committee of the Society for Financial Studies (1993-96), President of the Western Finance Association (1995-96), and is currently an Associate Editor of several finance journals. He also is currently a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (2008-present), a member of the Federal Reserve Bank’s Model Validation Council (2012- present), the Systemic Risk Council (2012-present), Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee (2007-present), the Financial Economists Roundtable (2006-present), and a Fellow of the TIAA-CREF Institute (2007-present).